Hindi (हिन्दी) - Overview
Namaste! Hindi is an intricate language and is one of the most understood languages in India. This is no small feat, considering that the number of people who speak this numbers over 425 million. Yes, that's the entire population of the US and then some. It has a closely related language cousin, Urdu, which is also widely understood. But in our discussion of Hindi, we need to be careful in understanding Hindi, because it doesn't refer to one widely understood language, but several dialects, of which Hindi is a major understood one. It is widely understood in Northern India. While the script is beautiful much like Arabic, it is actually read left-to-right. The main point to learning Hindi would be if you want to do some travelling in India. As one of the oldest countries in the history of the world, it is certainly worthwhile.| Quick Facts | |
|---|---|
| Language Family | Hindi |
| Script Used | Devanagari, a special script |
| Influences | Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Portuguese, other |
| Closely Related | Sanskrit, Urdu, Nepalese, Bengali, Gujarati |
| Spoken In | India, Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Nepal |
| Number of Speakers | 425 million |
| Official Language in | India |
| Typical Sentence Order | Subject -> Object -> Verb |
| Tonal | No |
| Written | Left to Right |
| Uses Articles? (a, the) | No |
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